In this project the researchers construct a database of the population of Suriname between 1830 and 1950. The archival sources of Suriname offer the opportunity to combine records on the individual lives of enslaved, bonded labourers and free inhabitants over five or six generations. This makes it possible to study social processes and diversity in colonial society as well as the repercussions of slavery over multiple generations.
Digital archive
This digital infrastructure facility will have a major impact on research. It can be used to answer a wide range of questions from scholars in the humanities, social sciences, and life sciences. Like, why did more men than women die? Or where did the migrants to Suriname come from?
The project starts from an earlier project in which the Surinamese slave registers database was published in collaboration with the public, that helped to transcribe and analyse the registers. In ‘Legacies of bondage’ the public will again play a central role to transcribe and analyze sources, for example the birth, marriage and death certificates in the civil registers of Suriname.
To make the new database accessible for different types of questions the data will be published in two different formats. First, the transcribed datasets of each individual archival source will be useful for genealogists, school projects and qualitative historians. In a second integrated database different archival sources will be combined in order to create reconstructed life courses of all individuals living in Suriname in this period, including links to family members and social networks.
